Oh hi there.

Can we say "seriously slacking"? Why yes we can.

So last time I wrote it was the end of block one....

and now we're about halfway through block 2.

this block is physiology and biochemistry...and since I am now taking 2 classes, the full med-student load, I have more than doubled my class time since last block. I have lecture every day from 9am-12am, lunch 12-1, and lecture from 1-2 or 1-3 depending on the day. Once or twice a week we have a conference or a lab from 1-3...so by the time I get back to my room every day I'm exhausted but I have to get right to work to avoid falling behind.

Hence my not writing. Because I'm not a person who feels particularly less-stressed after "expressing myself through writing" and so this blog takes time with no release, the way facebook and catching up on TV feels like my brain has relaxed a little.

This block's been really interesting...we went through all the metabolism of carbohydrates, and now fats, vitamins, and we're starting proteins...it's interesting because I don't have to memorize it. In undergrad that's all we did. We'd have test questions that would be like "draw out the (10 step) pathway of glycolysis including the structure of each molecule and the name of the enzyme that catalyzes each reaction" and it was zero understanding necessary. But now the professors are like "don't memorize this structure- I want you to understand that the body is trying to make this into this, and lets think about what would make sense for us to do in order to get there"

BECAUSE THE BODY MAKES SO MUCH SENSE!!!

In physiology we talked about respiration for like 2 weeks. Learned all about the lungs and how you breathe and how you regular your breathing and what happens in different lung diseases and how the body tries to compensate...awesome stuff. And everything is so perfectly logical. This block is the cardiovascular system, which I was in love with before and it hasn't disappointed me.

It's beautiful.

Incredibly complicated, but beautiful. I feel like we have a lecture and we learn something, and instead of learning thing linearly, we're learning in circles, and we keep drawing bigger and bigger circles around what we know...so that we keep talking about the same things but slightly more in depth each day. Which is really hard to do in a short time before you've had time to process the inside circle. But when I read a lecture from a few days ago, having at least a basic understanding of all the stuff I've learned in between, it makes that old lecture make a looot more sense. So it all works out I guess.

we had our first set of tests right before Christmas break, and then we started again Jan 3rd. 2nd set of exams is February 2nd, and then March 16, and then this block is OVER and we're back to only having one class, which is going to feel like a piece of heaven.

I've never studied so much in my life. I've never felt like I had to. I've never been so far behind while also knowing that just about everyone else was farther behind than me or at the same level.

This block I'm definitely just trying to truck along. I think I am less stressed about being behind than I was for the first exam set...which might be bad because I'm less likely to focus in and be really efficient that way..but that's life.

For example today I accidentally slept until 2pm. I didn't even go to bed that late! It was like 2...which I frequently do when I have to get up at 8 the next morning. I guess my body decided it was going to catch up.

I feel like this has been all over the place, so I'm just going to stop here.